


body on a wire's edge

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, M/M, POV Second Person, fingerstripes appreciation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: You have the world at your fingertips. Fact of the matter is you just didn't notice it until now.





	1. your eyes on mine, your hands on me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stevieraebarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevieraebarnes/gifts).



> inspired by [this gorgeous fanart shot of jay's ass](https://setsailslash.tumblr.com/post/185165238091/gavinfl-jasonass), which quickly derailed into me talking at stevie about fingerstripes fingering.
> 
> somewhere between there and this is the disconnect where my id took control, so have some super self indulgent 2nd person pov with nowhere as many fingering puns as i wanted because i am my own worst genie lamp. heck, skip this whole first chapter if you're looking for fingering puns because there is absolutely none of that.
> 
> i just really like it when jay is the only little brother that dick is capable of being mean to.

 

For all the training Bruce invested in you, you are a lousy detective when it takes you this long to put it together.

Like a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces falling into your opened palms, you only figure it out when you finally learn to pay as much attention to him as he does to you. but you're not quite there yet.

 

You haven't always been kind or sweet with him.

And that's on you.

You with your blistering anger misplaced on a child too short and thin. You with your temper simmering on low even after you agreed to pass the Robin mantle on to him. By the time you've figured out your mistakes (and _fuck_ , were there plenty), he was dead, buried six feet under, and you were still in outer space.

You are sorry, even if you never said it.

 

You imagine it probably isn't going to mean much even if you start saying it now.

For once, you're right. You swallow down those words to be broken down inside.

 

When he comes back from the dead, razes a trail of red across Gotham like he is on a righteous path, you almost do just as poorly.

Redemption has never been on your mind, but maybe it should have been. He is already the big bad crime lord controlling a good portion of the Gotham underworld when you come face to face with him again. Well, maybe not _quite_ face to face. Red Hood has his head tilting to the side. Gun to an unconscious man's head. Knife buried to the hilt in the same man's shoulder. He doesn't say a thing even if you wish he would.

"Little wing—" You start and then you are dodging that same knife being wrenched from the man's shoulder to hurtle at you with devastating accuracy.

He misses only because he wants to. And he knows that you know that too.

"Are we really playing this game?" Red Hood asks.

"And what game would that be?" You answer but really you are just buying time. For what? Well, you're still figuring that part out.

"If you want to play house, then let's play _house_." Red Hood drops the man, and he slumps to the ground with a thud. He points the gun at you instead. "I'll call you big bird and our dear ol'dad can try to slit my throat again."

One of those things feel out of place.

You put up both hands in surrender.

Cursing Bruce from hell to back.

Red Hood keeps going, taking your silence for something else entirely when his hand doesn't shake and you can tell the intent in the way his finger rests over the trigger. "Don't believe me?"

"I believe you." You say, and your hands shake visibly if just to see if he will react any differently.

He doesn't.

He just tilts his head further, one gloved finger reaching up to drag the collar of his shirt down to expose his throat.

"No scars yet but I'm sure it's going to be the best one yet when it finally heals. And you can guess the competition's tough. Thank B for me, why don't you? Thank him for the welcome home."

The bandages are a bright white outside of that streak of red where the wound must have reopened. And you've had your heart broken before but this feels like a deliberate visceral cut made into your gut to spill all of you inside out. You have to wonder if this is how he felt.

You hear the gunshot before you can react. Your hands curling into fists, you flinch even when there is no pain, and you're surprised by that.

"I'll see you around, big bird."

You look again and he is gone, the man he left behind all bled out, his head looking like a blown up watermelon for a lack of a better descriptor on your end. He doesn't flinch only because he is unconscious to start with.

Your hands drop to your side, the sigh you breathe out is near silent.

 

You don't figure it out until much later.

That the watermelon man was a terrible man. The kind that could still get the hairs to rise on your arms from the kind of despicable acts he had committed and that is just the things he was convicted of.

He probably deserved to die.

Not that it matters because it is not your call to make.

(This is not the first time you come to the conclusion that maybe it is a good thing that Red Hood has taken it upon himself to make the call.)

 

You don't learn to notice the most minor of inflections in his voice until a long time after.

He still isn't kind but maybe he shouldn't be if he is keeping count of all the things that has happened to him in his short young life.

When you wave at him from the roof across the street, and in just the dim glow of the streetlights between you and him, you have to wonder what he sees. He doesn't wave back as much as he simply disappears. The glint of red from his helmet the last thing you can make out before you blink again.

 

"So what game are we playing now?" You ask, dropping down next to him on a precarious edge. You turn bodily to him until you can see yourself in distorted shapes of black and blue reflecting against the shine of the Red Hood. "Is it hide and seek?"

"Are you having fun?" He asks instead of a reply.

And you wonder.

You tilt your head and you swing your legs and you twist your hands in your lap because. The truth of the matter is. You breathe out nosily through your nose. You know the words but your tongue feels all tangled up inside. You settle for whatever this is: "Not when you're always the one to hide."

His helmet dips down, turning to you, and your reflection shifts. Distorts further until you can't make any parts of yourself out against the red of the metal.

"So why do you bother with playing at all?"

You hate how far away he sounds, his voice near mechanical, echoing like there are miles and miles of distance between the two of you. And you really can't have that.

You reach out, he flinches back.

You stop, he stalls.

And it feels like he is holding his breath when your fingertips land on the side of his helmet.

"I just want to see you again."

He swallows thickly, audibly, and your eyes follow the line of his Adam's apple as it bobs. He reaches up and drags your hands from his face, his leather gloves wrapping painfully around your wrists.

"Apology not accepted, Dickiebird."

 

You feel the grind of your bones in his grip.

You feel the distance between you and him increase exponentially.

 

Your temper swells into a crescendo at the same time that everything goes as wrong as it possibly can. The case you have been chasing from Blüdhaven all the way to the docks of Gotham Bay ends, and quite literally blows up in your face as it does.

Your knuckles are probably dripping in red but you can't quite tell when it seems like everything else is too.

"Smells wretched here, like somebody died." He saunters in, in the aftermath of your mistakes. "Like several somebodies died." He chuckles and it is downright morbid when it comes out low and warped and bent all out of shape. "Smells like _home_."

You thought you outgrew this but fuck if your past doesn't like to keep coming back to haunt you with literal ghosts standing too tall and too big.

"Red Hood."

You are on the ground in the middle of a warehouse redecorated by a bloodbath biting out at him from between your teeth. Because you cannot go down this same road again, and if it helps, you can still treat him as the crime boss he has built an empire for instead of the little boy you resented for all the wrong reasons.

"Need a hand?" He asks, and it has you blinking behind your domino mask because _what_. He stands in front of you, unwavering, turning his head to scan the warehouse like he is looking for anything apart from you. "I don't usually hide my bodies but I know a few places around town."

"I didn't kil—" You cut yourself off because your inability to save them is essentially the same, is it not?

"You didn't have to but it's still the same result." He says, kindly, unkindly, it all sounds identical. "I died and they did too."

You reach up from where you are kneeling on the ground, turning both palms up to him. There is a dull, flat pause where you assess him and he does the same to you. The damage is done, and you have no idea how this helps at all when the reparations feel near impossible.

He picks you up, like an actual child and you have an inkling that the weakness in your knees can be blamed solely on him and him alone.

"You say the most fucked up things." You tell him, and you can't see his face but you are almost certain that he is smiling from behind the helmet at you.

"Language, golden boy."

You like that his brand of red is different than the colour all over your hands.

 

Death is an inevitability.

You understand that in an entirely different way than he does.

"What do you want?" He growls at you from where he is sitting hidden on the thirtieth level of the construction site with the scope of his sniper rifle going ignored when he has his helmet on and the tech whirling a quiet hum in the silence of the Gotham night.

"You know exactly what I want, little wing."

You want to see his face again. You also want him to stop killing. And he knows it too.

"Well, you can only pick one."

You know which one you have to choose. It is life over anything else. And ain't that the darnedest thing when it just isn't _his_ life when it counted.

"Why can't it be both?"

"Now you're just being greedy."

He is not entirely right because you are selfish too. You place your finger just underneath the trigger, preventing him from squeezing down.

He turns the front of his helmet from his target to you, allows you to feel all of his focus even when you cannot catch his eyes. You stay still and steady even as you nearly forget to breathe out. You feel it more than you know it when the pressure of the trigger finally lifts from your finger.

"Figures." He scoffs.

You save someone's life but you still feel as though you've just fucked it all up with him.

 

You're keeping count.

And it probably isn't fair, but what does fair ever really amount to?

(Not much, he can tell you if you ever get the words out.)

 

You are wracking your head to the last brain cell before you try what probably should've really been your first attempt.

You bring him food.

And you are not even subtle about it when you bring him a chili dog with all the right toppings.

"I hope you choke." He says instead of hello.

But then again, it isn't like you are saying hello either when you smile with all your teeth at him.

"Don't be stubborn." You keep grinning. "It's still hot."

"This is fucking low, even for _you_ , dickhead." He bites out at you. His voice modulator ensures he sounds the same but to you, it sounds every bit different, and you feel a slow warm heat that spreads in your gut to spill out of you.

"Like I haven't heard that one before, Jay." You laugh before you are taking the first bite of your chili dog, and then it is a bit of a ravenous feat because if you actually think about it, it has almost been twelve hours since you've last had anything that wasn't an energy bar. You eat messily, get chili all over your hands and when you swallow, you have to admit, it's really damn good. And it is not entirely your hunger catching up with you.

"You eat like a child." He says, finally, flatly.

You just grin back at him again, this time with your mouth full when you are still chewing. You swipe the plop of chili that falls from the end of your hot dog to suck it into your mouth. You are sitting cross legged next to him on the edge of the rooftop where he has settled for the third night in a row on a stakeout you only have, at best, a quarter of the intel to.

"You _really_ don't want yours?"

He grunts.

You reach out with a chili dirtied finger and pokes at his helmet. The red smudging a spot of brown from the sauce where his cheek would be. He doesn't make one more noise in protest before he has your wrist in his hand. His hand is still gloved, but so are yours.

When the bones in your wrist grind under his grip, he lets go. Drops your hand like he is the one in pain.

You don't allow yourself to think of a reason why. You refuse to get your hopes up when it has fallen through so many times.

"Just eat the fucking thing and _go_."

He is stubborn but so are you, you relent only because you know a battle lost is not a war forfeited.

You take your time, and then you eat his chili dog too.

 

You have a lap full of puzzle pieces and not a single idea what the final picture is supposed to look like.

"You don't even live here." He says, irritation warping his words when you find him in the bowels of Gotham again.

"I can still patrol here." You fall into step with him along the ledge of the tallest building overlooking the Bowery. When he finally answers you, it comes out quiet.

"You left."

You expect a reply, but not one like this.

"Only because I was fired." You point out, not looking to him when you take a few quick strides as you overtake him, spreading your arms out on both sides for balance you don't need. "You left too."

His bark of laughter hinges on incredulous. But you guess it is only fair when you get this far just to go right back to the start. " _Seriously_?"

"If we are talking technicalities." You shrug, the line of blue of your suit follows that same motion.

You are still mean in your bones, and he still manages to bring it out in you every time.

"I didn't know we were."

You turn around, you look at him. Maybe neither one of you have really changed at all.

"Oops." You say to him.

You still can't see his eyes but neither can he see yours. You think you are beginning to read between the lines when he reaches out. For a good long second there where he stops himself from closing that distance, you almost believe he is going to go through with pushing you off of the ledge. And you'll fully deserve it.

You brace yourself. Gotham stretching out in yearning behind you.

And you finally gather the courage to put down that first piece next to another that fits when he is standing frozen on the ledge. Because, _oh_. You are thinking. Oh _fuck_ , you think, this time in a bit more eloquent terms. You look down at your hands and you are reminded of the way it itches just beneath your fingertips.

You want to trace the scar at his neck, your bare skin against his.

 

You can't see his eyes and he can't see yours when you still have your domino mask on.

But fuck if any of that matters when you can see why he stays in place at all. 

 

So he leaps.

Off from the edge.

 


	2. your mouth on mine, your fingers in me

 

If Bruce taught you a thing at all, you should have seen this trajectory going the exact way it does.

Some things are doomed to begin with. And like those exact things, you slip up, like you always do. On a downwards plummet that goes far and deep. You have no idea how you keep forgetting the fact that you've failed once and you will most certainly fail again.

 

You throw yourself over the ledge.

Like it is the most normal thing to do.

 

Your free fall cancels out the sensation of that roiling hollow drop of your gut when you don't pitch forward to empty the contents of your stomach on to the ground. Hardly that because you are landing on both feet, steady, unsteady, the line you fired at the last possible second keeps you from smashing your face into the asphalt only because you are already running before your body gets the chance to react.

You don't like the implications here, even if you are the only one making them when you are following in his footsteps, doing precisely what you accused him of doing. He left, and then you did too. There are technicalities here that make none of this fair. But neither you nor him are playing a particularly fair game to begin with.

You leave first this time like it is some kind of competition. You leave even if you have plenty of other choices.

Fact of the matter is—

You tell yourself vehemently to shut the fuck up.

Your heart hammers inside of your chest, a loud booming thunder that claps then echoes inside of the confined safety of your helmet.

You feel hot beneath your collar, the flush in your veins working just below your skin. Epinephrine and norepinephrine working in tandem. You are hot and embarrassed and utterly mortified on the realization alone. You try to breathe through it, thinking rational thoughts instead of the irrational, your boots splashing the filthy water of the puddles as you take another sharp corner.

One more Gotham city block drawing out between you and him.

 

You can run all you like. And you can run plenty as you've proven again and again. But as it turns out, he puts it together.

Shoving that shredded heart of yours into your throat. Slotting that torn heart of yours to be sewn to your sleeves. He says _oops_ like he isn't fitting your heart into his hands. Like he isn't cradling a live bomb wired to blow.

 

"Need a hand?"

And if you weren't already cursing up a storm, you would surely be doing exactly that when you hear him drop down behind you, his landing is near silent before he is rounding a kick right into a man that was coming at you from the back with a sword. You haven’t seen him in _weeks_ , and you were counting on the precise continuation of that before he is showing up again in a town that explicitly doesn't belong to him.

You are careful to steer clear of Blüdhaven but he has never been careful with you to start. You have to wonder why you bother at all.

The actual answer to Nightwing's quip of a question is absolutely fucking not but you settle for something a little less biting as you narrowly dodge a machete being waved around by another replaceable goon.

"I'm just _fine_." You tell him but really your patience can only run so thin.

The mentality of crowding an opponent for a win might be crude but it sure is effective.

Quantity over quality, and all that jazz. You are pretty sure it's been a solid fifteen minutes that Penguin's men have not stopped coming at you with the most versatile assortment of weapons you've seen since coming back to Gotham. Seems like the Penguin isn't just trafficking in the big guns if his men are swinging around so many other things.

"Sure, little wing." Nightwing keeps going, his breathing steady, near calm as he unsheathes his escrima sticks from his back. And it takes him barely four smooth moves and a painfully loud crackle of electricity before he puts another henchman down in your name. You hate that he sounds downright amused when he turns to look at you, sarcasm dripping from every word. "You definitely look like you have a handle on it."

And you hate it even more when your own reply falls flat on an audible grunt when a baseball bat collides solidly against the side of your left knee, nearly bringing you to the ground from the blunt force alone.

You don't need to glance over to know Nightwing deliberately allowed that hit to land without making a single indication to warn you. But you hardly have the time when you are wrenching the baseball bat from between the man's hand to crack it over that same knee he managed to hit.

The snap of the varnished wood is satisfying.

So is the way the henchman scrambles back to get away from you with a choked off noise of terror when it splinters so nicely.

Nightwing whistles from where he stands, loud enough for the sound to echo as you toss each end of the bat to opposite ends of the abandoned building and motions the same man to try again. He doesn't charge at you. And you almost wish you didn't have your helmet on if just so the man can see the way your lips curl, near feral, to smile with all your teeth at him.

It takes you all of two maneuvers to knock the man out for good.

"Still think I don't have this under control?"

Your voice carries when you call out, finally turning around to find Nightwing in your line of vision again, a litter of bodies across the distance between you and him. You have more than enough bullets to kill every single person in this room twice over and still have extra ammunition to spare even if your aim was feeling particularly off.

You know your question is the wrong one even as you ask it. Because you are not really asking him about this fight, it is the ramifications of having been out of your mind for so long.

He thinks your actions are controlled by pit rage. He thinks you are insane on a good day.

"Prove me wrong." He says, waiting, both hands up with his escrima sticks still in a loose grip. His answer is an answer but not quite one to the question you are asking. He makes the choices on offer clear as day, especially when his stance is looking like a ploy for surrender.

But you know better. His answer is not an answer at all.

So it appears that your streak to maim instead of outright kill hasn't gone as unnoticed as you have been hoping.

You wait too, and you don't give up a single thing if just to see him held on a razor's edge. Maybe he is right. Maybe you are insane. And if this is a good day, you almost wish he finds you on a bad one. You hold him there for far longer than you need to because you've made your choice since the very beginning. It still pains you, far more than you thought possible, when you draw both guns back into your holsters without firing one single kill shot.

You feel your own breath hitch, not for your actions but his instead.

His comes. He breathes out, and it's even.

 

Your imagination is a vivid thing.

He is the cause and all of you are the effect when you bodily react to him every time.

You try to focus on anything else, your eyes falling to his hair flopping just over his forehead. Your gaze catching the expressive curl of his mouth. Your stare lingering on the arch of his spine as he turns into a particularly brutal kick.

But your eyes still stray.

Like they always do. Jumping from one point to another, skipping over the taut pull of his suit to follow the stretch of the brilliant blue of his symbol going across his chest. Your eyes go all the way, along the sinew line of his arms, the stripe of blue looking especially bright to end at his fingertips.

 

Here is the root cause of a good portion of your problems, and you've got a great deal of them.

You can look away all you want but you close your eyes, and you see him and those fingerstripes.

 

It isn't so much a shared case as it is his person of interest shooting your person of interest point blank.

He comes up to you to make it a point before you can get a single word in. Maybe that is for the best even if it definitely doesn't feel like it.

"You really have to stop pointing your finger at me, Jay."

And even now, you still can't quite tell whether he is doing this on purpose or not. The way he anticipates your every move, like his eyes are trailing after you beneath those blank milky lenses of his domino mask. Because he knows that you know that he knows. But does he _really_ when you have learned to be this good at fooling yourself too.

"Only when it stops being your fault." Your answer is spiteful but so are you. "Your guy killed my guy.”

You say this like you care at all for the life of a low level scum you were hoping to lead you to a much bigger fish. Your heart is hardly broken but you are still irate. The only consolation you get out of this is the fact that his case has probably gone up in just as much smoke as yours.

He looks like he wants to argue, but he always looks like he wants to fight with you. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, his arms crossing over his chest, the broad band of his shade of blue tangible with how close he's come to stand next to you and the body spilling puddles of red in the shadows of the empty dock.

"What now?" He asks, heaving a sigh, nudging you to stop when you dig the toe of your boot just beneath the man's shoulder to try to flip him over.

"You give me a go at your guy."

" _What_?" He turns sharply to look at you, his hands already reaching out to stop you. And to your credit (and his too when he keeps trying like this is somehow going to amount to anything), you don't flinch when his fingers close around your forearm, his grip going tight.

You hold still and your words do not stutter when you keep going with nothing but conviction lacing your tongue to say. "I'm going to shoot him."

Nightwing groans, fingers reflexively curling even tighter against your arm, like he can physically refrain you from doing anything you truly want to do. Your eyes follow, like they always do, when his other hand reaches up, drags his fingers through his hair like he's frustrated, and not entirely with you.

You don't understand that bit of the entire transaction.

He sighs again, looking around then back at you, looking considering, and you don't understand this either.

"All jokes aside," he starts like you didn't just say what your plan is going to be. But you haven't had a kill on your hands for months, you know he knows that, you also know that he's known this for a while now and never made too much of a point to draw attention to it.

You still lie through your teeth. "Nobody was joking but keep going."

He smiles, that wicked grin is back even though the stench of death is still raw in the air. He has his phone out, dialing into the GCPD and hearing it ring. "Before you do anything rash, let me finger this out."

He still doesn't let you go, and you almost shoot the dead man once more for good measures when you feel him switching on the spotlight over you. It rings, it clicks, it connects, and you flush fucking red beneath your helmet as he starts talking on the other line like you are not even here. He is mean, but never in any way that actually makes you want him to stop.

You are the one who is cruel when you're wrenching your arm from his grasp and running again.

First step on a shaky stance. He is kind in that he lets you go. Last step, and you barely have the ground beneath your feet. It is no way to live but you have never really been great at living.

And you would know, you're doing this a second time.

 

Your vendetta is not with him, not entirely anyway.

But it always feels like he is the closest one around.

 

You don’t work with the bats for plenty of thoroughly good reasons. But you can’t exactly just abandon the city to fend for herself when she’s never had quite a good track record of keeping herself intact. For sheer grandiose and theatrics, the annual Wayne Gala is hosted at the Gotham Theatre.

You end up being the only one on patrol that night because everyone else have a tailored suit and their best hosting smile to put on. And you, _well_ , you are legally very much dead.

You don’t mind it. Not one bit. You keep telling yourself that. Perhaps, one day, you will even start to believe it too.

It is a bit of a slow going thing.

 

It is quiet when you drop down on the roof of the theatre, circling the domed roof.

He is not trying to hide, and neither are you, and you think this might be the first attempt at friendly on a framework you are actually comfortable with since you've been back. The rickety staircase groans under him and you take a step back for fear the whole thing would collapse under your combined weight. He is in a black suit, tie loosened at his throat, he doesn't have his domino mask on, and his eyes are blue blue _blue_ even when the shadows fall over his face.

"Hey Jay," he says, holding out a plate of hors d'oeuvres. "Finger food?" He asks, popping a shrimp into his mouth.

And he can't see, not from underneath the helmet you have never once taken off in front of him, but you imagine he can hear the way you grind down on your molars at _that_ particular choice of word.

"No." You grit out. "Thanks."

"Your loss." He says, picking up another shrimp, wiggles it in your direction before putting it into his mouth again, his mouth that is curling into a less than nice grin.

He is not subtle.

But you probably aren't much better.

Not when he leaves you with the rest of his plate even though you already turned it down once before. He keeps still and silent by the door leading back down into the theatre while you make another round around the wide expanse of the rooftop, looking every part like you are casing the place with the intention to find exactly where to place a single explosive device to bring the entire structure down.

(But he sees through that too, takes your best attempt at distraction on a dead quiet night to be an impossible ploy, given you both already know where, right beneath the support column in the main room where the foundation is faulty. It is always going to be getting to it that makes it difficult.)

When you end up at the same spot once more, his plate sitting and still full of food, you don't look in his direction.

You don't even take off your helmet completely when you sit down on the rooftop with your back turned to him. You only flip the face piece up to eat, chewing loudly for his benefit even when your habit to scarf it all down in silence plagues at you still.

You don't really swallow that first bite until you hear the door closing behind him for good.

 

You figure the adrenaline is a lot of the same even if nothing else is.

Because the only edge you know is the one where you throw the goons you want information from, over the side of the building and dangling by just your grip at their ankles, you want that unbearably tight hold on _you_.

Your head drawing parallels wherever you can get them.

You are embarrassingly wet, leaking openly at the tip and he is squeezing down to keep you right where he wants you. Black at the palm and that brilliant blue at just the index and middle fingers of those hands, you can see him wrapping both hands around the base of your erection like he would when he closes them down around his escrima sticks.

He asks you if can come with you, together, he murmurs, his voice shuddering while you shake. Calls you little wing with his mouth right at the shell of your ear, and you are not sure how to be what he wants even when you are already nodding your head to plead _yes_.

Instead you settle for your own hands on your own cock on a mattress in the center of a safehouse that is closer than any other. All slick and wet and practically dripping even when the angle is wrong and the position is not entirely comfortable. Your weight is on your shoulders as you settle for pushing your fingers inside of yourself, thinking that he is kneeling over you, still in his Nightwing uniform and pushing aside your hands to replace them with his.

Your eyes are half-lidded and your vision swims. You feel his fingers rubbing deep inside of you where you can never quite reach.

It's a feat, really, how high your fever dream for him burns.

You feel full and satisfied and you're not quite sure when you are coming across your stomach but when you are, you are blinking at your ceiling in the dark.

 

You think of every filthy thing he could do to you.

You also imagine his hand holding yours.

 

He pushes you down, and this is happening for real, but that isn't when you freak out.

His hand on the center of your chest, his fingers spread out and it is like you can feel the points of his fingertips like brands over the red bat across your chest. You are only unsettled by the way he is stronger than you expected, and so much more aggressive than you thought capable when he shoves you down, and keeps you down.

You freak out _then_.

 

"Stop it, Jason. Stop running."

"Talk for yourself, _Dick_." You bite right back at him, and he is too close for you to read any of his intentions when he has you shoved back against the corner of your fire escape. You are literally three feet from your safe house but he doesn't let you move.

"I found you, didn't I?"

"That doesn't count for much, I haven't exactly been hiding."

But that is a lie too, and he sees through every single one. He is mad, and so are you, but neither one of you are really sure what the anger is burning at this point. You see him  change tactics in the way the line of his body goes loose, and it misleads you into relaxing too as he does. You're stupid for him, but that isn't new.

"Hey, Jay." He says, dragging your attention from his eyes that you can't see to his mouth that you can. "Follow my hands."

Before he is bringing you right back to the start, to his fingertips as he reaches down slow between the two of you, grabbing a hold of your inner thighs to pry your legs apart. Your choked off little noise of surprise sounds exactly like that even when it goes through the voice modulator of your helmet. Your litany of murmured _fuck_ s very much audible when he only crowds closer, settling himself between your spread thighs.

He leans in, his face reflecting off of the metallic red.

"We're outside right now but if we weren't, I'd take off my mask so you can really see."

"...See what exactly?"

He doesn't answer because he can't, not when he is pressing his mouth to your helmet, just over where your mouth would be. He sighs on a part of his lips, the softest smallest noise that keeps you still and pinned right where he put you.

"That's not fair." You say, on a hard swallow when he finally leans back on his hunches after he's made a thorough show of making out with your helmet.

"Well, that's hardly my fault. I'd rather make out with this red bucket than a headless corpse if I try to disengage it without your permission."

It's hardly the thing to focus on but you say. "You know about that."

"You mean the fact that it explodes? Why do you think I never wrestled you to yank the damn thing off your head." He tells you, his hands still on the inside of your thighs except he is digging into the flesh, and it has you biting back a moan to want bruises in the shape of his hands all over you. "You thought I wouldn't win?"

You go quiet, silent really. It's a choice here, it's your choice.

And the low sound of release as you disengage the locking mechanism of your helmet fills the narrow space he’s left between you. You think again, on all of your choice words. Your voice coming out muffled and soft but un-modulated. You tell him this instead. "I never want to forgive you."

And he still fucking _smiles_.

"Good." He says, his mask hides a fair bit but it feels like the two of you are finally on equal footing. "Because I never want to stop making up to you."

 

When you disengage your helmet, he is the one to tug it off.

Like he is the one eager to put his hands on you. Like he is the one that has been in love for years and years on end. When he rubs a thumb across your bottom lip, your mouth falls open, tongue darting out. You know that he knows exactly what you want. He still likes to be mean about it but that is part of it all. When he pushes his fingers inside, you only open up wider.

His blue against the red of your mouth.

 

You take a leap, but you don't fall.

Not while he's here, not when he's got you. He catches you by the hand, and you capture his mouth with yours.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and then they fucked on the fire escape.
> 
> turns out, there aren't nearly enough fingering puns so i had to reluctantly expand my repertoire and use hand puns too. none of them are clever but i hope this was fun because i certainly spoiled myself rotten with getting to write so much 2nd person pov, it really shows how much jay likes to be inside his head with how much i rambled on.


End file.
